domain:aerosociety.com
netstack
Texas is freedom land
17hr ago
Inflammatory claims require evidence. Drive-by insults at entire categories count.
Given the sheer number of warnings and bans you've accrued over the last six months, you ought to be aware of this. One week ban, again.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
17hr ago
And the reason we do that is because there was massive undersupply in the 80s and 90s because universities still wanted them to be paid peanuts. Everything about is labor cost arbitrage.
BurdensomeCount
Messenger Status: Shot
17hr ago
If you go cold turkey on benzos you run the risk of killing yourself because your body can't handle the stress. The question now is whether migrants are like benzos or, say, antihistamines.
I personally prefer to think in terms of money as the abstraction helps me to reason more efficiently. However for teaching the common man the real resources framework is absolutely the way to go as that way you don't have to waste epicycles telling them why their objection they thought up in 20 seconds isn't gonna solve the issue.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
17hr ago
In the interest of avoiding a spiral of "uh-huh"/"nuh-uh"...
More effort than this, please.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
17hr ago
But how will my body continue to function without drugs if I stop taking them?
Maybe quitting the infinite cheap labor pool cold turkey isn't the best or least painful way to get back to a functioning labor market with accurate price signals, shocks never feel good, but it's still better than continuing to slowly turn into South Africa.
Rising wages are an incentive to increase productivity. When did we stop wanting machines to do menial jobs and instead started to want miserable strangers to do them instead?
Corvos
17hr ago
It’s saying that, with sufficient mental and physical automation, they don’t need other human beings in order to pursue their rivalry.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
17hr ago
Why do people make pro-social sacrifices?
People care (or at least used to care) about legacy. Your name immortalized as a small part of something larger, and possibly echoing in eternity. Either through your children, your people, your fellowship, what have you.
Of course now we're all clumps of cells trying to con the big machine we're stuck in to afford personal material comforts, so the argument that it's sacrilegious to despoil what you've been handed into care and break the chain is much harder to make.
Managerialism will be the death of Universities as institutions, that has seemed clear ever since it captured them. But maybe the endeavor will survive for those who didn't fully embrace this deathly mentality. You never know.
zeke5123a
17hr ago
Why would you assume that? The administrator doesn’t have any long term benefit if the school is in good condition far off in the future but benefits greatly from short term boosted numbers.
ControlsFreak
17hr ago
Fair enough. Though I think that as we move in the direction of stronger versions of the divide between rigor and critical thinking, I find myself thinking that it is unlikely that I am going to have access to any sort of measurement or indicator of the level of critical thinking. I think my previous comment could be interpreted as having an implicit, "I don't know how to measure/assess critical thinking, directly, so if I'm going to have any hope at coming to a view on this issue, I'm probably going to have to rely on the best proxy I can come up with that I have been able to access." And thus, the more we move toward thinking that rigor is just not a good proxy, the more I move toward thinking that critical thinking is just currently unobservable.
Corvos
18hr ago
I like your frame partly because it suggests useful ways of addressing the problem. (I don't intend this as a gotcha).
-
People are wiping butts instead of cleaning -> more robot vacuums / mops.
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People are wiping butts instead of waiting tables -> more of those robots that carry food from the kitchen to the table + normalize selecting & paying for food using a ticket machine at the entrance as in Japan.
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People are wiping butts instead of manning tills -> put more serious work into unmanned checkouts.
Most of these are not insoluble problems, they are problems that nobody was incentivized to solve.
My only worry would be that so much of our economy is purely financialised at this point that such an approach would neglect serious aspects of reality that matter. No idea if this is true.
Two frames for the argument about less-skilled migration and similar supply-side tradeoffs
A thought inspired by this article on the UK's ConservativeHome. John Oxley's article criticises the Starmer administration for not saying how they are going to recruit British care workers to replace the immigrant care workers they are cutting visas for. Everyone agrees in principle that pay and conditions for care workers will need to improve to make this happen, and that this is all right and proper as long as the Magic Money Fairy pays for it.
Oxley writes about the problem from the perspective of money flows - if we want to pay care workers more, we will need to funnel money into care homes, either by increasing charges to residents (and therefore making Granny sell her house to pay for care), by raising taxes, or by cutting spending on other things.
I tend to prefer the flipped frame which focusses on the flow of goods and services. If we send British workers (and, in particular, physically healthy British workers with a good attitude - this mostly rules out the argument that better-paid care work would magically bring back all the people who have been claiming disability benefits since the pandemic) into care homes, then the work they are currently doing will not get done. In this frame the median voter will be poorer because their favourite restaurant disappears (people are wiping butts instead of waiting tables), they have to spend time in grubby shops, offices, schools and hospitals (people are wiping butts instead of cleaning), and they have to deal with more unexpected items in the bagging area (people are wiping butts instead of manning tills). The tax rises, spending cuts, or even deficit-induced inflation are just a way of making this impoverishment stick in a market economy.
Whichever frame you use, this doesn't answer the question - there could easily be costs of less-skilled migration which mean it is net-negative for the country. But both are ways of forcing you to confront the tradeoff. I prefer the real resources frame because it makes clear that the tradeoff is inexorable and there is no way out through financial jiggery-pokery.
Do Motteposters have a view on whether thinking about this type of question in terms of money or in terms of real resources is more helpful?
Come on. There's a difference between "I am suggesting that people do this to learn life skills" and "I am suggesting that people do this to justify my claims". Ethics classes are recommended in the former context. Your "recommendation" that Pasha study things himself was in the latter context.
You have confused the former for the later. I may not have written well enough and so be partly to blame for your misconception, but unless you have developed internet mind reading skills that allow you to identify motives that I am unaware of, I am confident I know my motives, and my separate claims, better than you.
My claim is that Pasha should learn life skill do this because it can be interesting, and with later elaboration, useful. This could fairly be characterized as "I am suggesting that people do this to learn life skills (that can be interesting and are useful)."
My suggestion of how Pasha should go about it, with the reasoning as to why elaborated after the post, is a claim of a way to avoid (and thus respect) his distrust of the institutional actors who normally teach the subject matter. This could be fairly characterized as "I am suggesting a specific way to learn life skill (that differs from a ways that you have indicated contempt for).
I am not claiming Pasha should do the [this] that was the subject of what I quoted when replying to him-
I have never been exposed to an ethics class that wasn’t total non-sense taught by dimwit professors. Just all around busywork.
My claim is not that Pasha should do [this] to learn life skills anyway. Nor am I making a claim that he should keep trying until he finds one by a non-dimwit professor. Or that the busywork he was assigned in the past was secretly meaningful and he just missed the point.
My claim is that self-driven study of certain sub-fields (professional ethics) is a way to get better value (interest and useful insights) in a way that isn't a disliked medium (ethics class) taught by distrusted instructors (dimwit professors) and or with make-work (busywork). The 'assignment' proposed- noting different lines of emphasis, and how some professions deal with the blanket moral prohibitions espoused by others- does not require any writing or feedback to anyone else. It exists not to provide something to do for a grade, but provide relevant insights for how different professional cultures interact.
You should just explain it, since you are the one making the claim, not demand he study it himself.
One, if you do not consider 'this subject matter can be interesting and professional useful, and this learning way avoids your concerns' an explanation for why to self-study study material, I would suggest you are too used to the motte's tendency for essay-length responses.
Two, it is not a demand. It is a suggestion, hence 'if you get a chance,' which allows him full discretion to refuse on any grounds he wants. The emphasis on his discretion may not have been clear enough due to the words used and the filtering effect of internet, but even then demands have an 'or else [consequence]' attached to the back end. The only [consequence] for not partaking is that he might lose the benefits of [interesting and useful insights] of partaking.
"I want you to do it on your own" is a filibuster, not an honest argument.
No, it is not. On two fronts.
One, a short argument is not a filibuster.
The argument provided may have been too short of an argument. The argument may have been unclear, and used poor choices of word to seem more of a demand than it was. But recommendations with short supporting arguments and no time commitment are about as far from a filibuster argument as one can get.
Two, 'I want you to do it on your own' is an honest argument if it I honestly think he would enjoy and benefit more from doing it on his own and I want him to have that benefit.
Pasha seems highly skeptical of the university format- a format generally meant to guide students rather than have them do it on their own. Moreover, he has built this from personal experience. One can sincerely believe he would both enjoy the material more and be in a mindset to learn specific lessons if he engaged it on his own volition, in a more targeted nature, on their own spare time, rather than be compelled to (i.e. from a demand from dim-wit professors) in a time-constrained environment (university with competing classes).
dukeleto
18hr ago
There is only a massive oversupply because we allow essentially unlimited numbers of foreign grad students in, so they could easily go away
No_one
19hr ago
Are you telling me that Putin and Xi etc trusts American Deep State? Because that's what you're saying, essentially. That the elites trust each other.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
19hr ago
The difference is that the pond is not shared. A disciplined institution will keep its elite status even if it doesn't make as much money in the short term.
The problem is that of producing management that has an interest in the long term instead of looting the existing status for short term gain.
The temptation is strong, but you'd think universities of all institutions would want to select for those kinds of people. I'm sure, say, pontifical universities don't have the same views on this matter as your local community college.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
19hr ago
NatSci is more specialised then it looks because there isn't enough time in the second year to stay broad if you want to qualify for a competitive specialised third year course. The vast majority of physicists took no courses for credit in the second year except maths, physics, and one scientific computing course that the Computer Science department helps teach but doesn't give its own students credit for. The vast majority of people who get onto a "proper" biological Part II (one that can lead to Masters' and PhD courses) either took all biology in the second year, or organic chemistry as their only non-biological course.
PPE is, by reputation, the easiest Oxford degree. I think this is another case of my underlying point that the closer you get to the classical/US idea of a liberal arts education the harder it gets to resist grade inflation.
RenOS
Technology giveth, Sociology taketh
19hr ago
+1 We were told the same (Applied Math in North Germany). That culture seems to be changing though.
Corvos
19hr ago
PPE at Oxford and Natural Sciences at Cambridge aren’t far off, though.
Of course PPE is widely pilloried for leading to a superficial understanding. I don’t know if that means the curriculum is too broad or the testing too lenient.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
19hr ago
The fact that multiple Heads of State felt the need to way in on the Saskatchewan crash implies that multiple-fatality accidents where a CDL-holding trucker is uncomplicatedly at fault are vanishingly rare.
This is unsurprising - at-fault car crashes are a "few bad apples" problem. It wouldn't surprise me if the average CDL holder who obeys drivers-hours law (which is effectively enforced in the EU - I don't know about the US) is more than 10x better (in terms of frequency of at-fault crashes) than the average car driver.
FWIW, the minimum standard to pass the driving test in the UK is about twice as high for commercial vehicles vs cars - a car test allows 15 minor faults in 40 minutes (16 minor faults or one serious fault is a fail) whereas a commercial vehicle test allows 12 minor faults in 60 minutes. But the worst car drivers on the road are driving at a standard that would not pass the test - they are unlicensed (and never passed the test) or tired/drunk/testosterone-poisoned/senile and driving worse than they did when they passed their tests.
dr_analog
razorboy
19hr ago
I'm amazed that it could ever go any other way. Schools that get paid to give out degrees that open career doors have inherited a commons. The rare school that doesn't succumb to pressure to pass everyone is like the fisherman saying no, we've caught enough, while surrounded by competitors pulling fish out of the water by the ton.
ccc
19hr ago
Isn't there a massive oversupply of TA's and PhD students? Get them to do it for pennies. Hell, they already do that. It's not like professors at large like teaching anyway, much less grading.
Southkraut
Vibe of vibes, saith the Preacher, vibe of vibes; all is vibe.
19hr ago
Hah, we were told similar things on day 1.
"Look to your left, look to your right, those guys won't be there by the semester's end.".
I don't think you even need to go this far in summative evaluation. You can still have graded, proctored tests, as well as essays written in class during a timed window.
You don't have to jump from aysynchronous homework -> graduation exam. You can go from current state to in-class, real-time testing. No reason for it to be oral or 1:1.
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